Story
The story of Kızkalesi
About 300 metres off the shore, a castle rises straight out of the sea. According to Strabo, this islet, known in antiquity as Crambusa, was once used by pirates. The present castle was probably built by the Byzantine emperor Alexios I after the First Crusade.
In the 13th century the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia rebuilt it with round towers and new facing stone; two inscriptions name King Levon I (1206) and King Hethum I (1251). The island was once linked by a breakwater to the Korykos castle on the mainland. It was taken by King Peter I of Cyprus in 1360, by the Karamanids in 1448 and by Gedik Ahmed Pasha in 1471. Each of its eight towers has a different shape.
Its name comes from a legend: a king of Korykos is told that his daughter will die of a snakebite. He locks her away on this island, but one day a snake hidden in a basket of grapes from the palace bites her.
This story is compiled from Wikipedia and other open sources; dates and numbers are checked against the source. The text is shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Source ↗
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